Tropics Heating Up

Atlantic Hurricane & Tropical Storm Center

 

 

A large area of disturbed weather over the western Caribbean is moving toward the west-northwest at about 10 knots. The tropical disturbance is centered just northeast of Nicaragua. Currently, there is no clear closed low-level circulation in this area right now. The pressure actually rose a few millibars overnight.

However in the last several hours, an area of thunderstorms started to blossom, so the pressure might fall once again later today. There is still some uncertainty where this tropical system will go once it enters the Gulf Of Mexico on Thursday night. Once this system moves into the Gulf Of Mexico, then it will have the best chance of gaining strength and forming a surface low. Most of the model guidance shows the tropical moisture moves somewhere between the mouth of the Mississippi to the panhandle of Florida.

This is likely to happen on Friday afternoon into Saturday. There is a slight chance that the storm system will move slower into the Gulf of Mexico and head toward central Texas. As of right now this is the outlier, with the most probable outcome will be the system moving towards the Florida Panhandle.

There is a second area of concern that just emerges off the coast of Africa. This area of convection could form into a tropical system by the end of this week. Computer models show this system gaining latitude and entering cooler waters and weakening. If the storm system stays south, it will stay in warmer waters with less dry air. If this is the case it will track closer to the Lesser Antilles. As of right now it it does not appear that this system will be a strong or big tropical system. However, this is still a week and a half away, so we will have plenty of time to monitor this situation.

The rest of the Atlantic Basin remains relatively quiet.